Computer Class in Session

While I am not known for my extraordinary computer skills, relative to the skills of those around me, I am a genius. Naturally, I have taken it upon myself to be computer instructor for Lexon and Repent. SSCA (our local partner) got a computer sometime in the past year—at least, it has been here since before I got here, but no one knew how to use it. In fact, the first lesson I had with Repent and Lexon was ‘How to Turn on Your Computer.’ This went smoothly until we realized that no one remembered the password, which had helpfully been put on the computer as a security precaution.  Fortunately, using the password hint, I was able to figure it out and we moved on. I won’t write here what the password is in case any of you plan to try to hack into our computer and steal our secrets.

After learning how to turn on and off the computer, we moved on to  “How to Use the Mouse.” We’re still on that lesson. It turns out that for men who didn’t spend their childhood playing video games, using a piece of plastic to control something moving on a screen does not come naturally. It’s lucky that, though I’m not known for my extraordinary computer skills, I am known for my extraordinary patience. I only once or twice (maybe more) grabbed a hand and moved it into the right position. Sometimes I also suggest solo practice, where I leave my pupil undisturbed by me and exit the room to go do something else (write this blog post for example) and allow the men to move the mouse as slowly or quickly as they want. Naturally, due to my excellent teaching skills, my students are making rapid progress, and I fully expect them to remember the difference between right and left-clicking by the end of the week. By the time I head back to the US of A at the end of November, they’ll probably be ghost-writing this blog. That will be so nice for me—I’ve tried for years to get one of the sisters to ghost-write the blog for me (hey—they were both Creative Writing majors!), but they are so selfish with their time and skills. As you can see from the before and after photo of Repent’s first self-created document, he is grateful to me, at least.

Learning computers and English--the "After" photo was the easiest 'fix' I could
make for the "Before." Don't act like you could do any better.

Finally, I should mention that I love Repent and Lexon, and that teaching them is an exciting new pastime for me that reminds me every day of why God did not think it wise to put me in a full-time teaching position.

Also, I know that it’s also probably not OK to take photos of things that my students write that I find amusing, but that has always been my favorite part of whenever I have been a teacher. If I am ever not too lazy to upload my journal from my teaching in China days (it was before I knew about blogging but I kept it for the same reason that I’m writing this blog-to minimize emailing while preserving important moments from my life for posterity), you could see some of the better compositions from my genius stupents there (not a typo, just an example). But I can already tell you that I will never not be too lazy to do that. Still, there’s hope for you if Repent and Lexon ever start ghost-writing the blog for me because they are loving the computer these days. Repent especially loves changing the font and underlining everything.

Please enjoy the following photos from the 

Neverthirst/SSCA Computer Class in Mundri!!

Lexon and his composition (before I taught him about the space bar)

I made this large so you can read it--this is our letter-writing session. I have been promoted to "reverend" by Lexson

Repent is working hard

I did the lazy-teacher thing when you made the students teach each other.
But Repent forgot how to save a document, so I had to step in and help anyway.

Extra-large size photo again so you can see that we now have 5 files saved on our computer!
One of them is brilliantly entitled "I love Amanda"